I like Steve Rubel's writing, but this comment is just... odd:

However, Microsoft needs to be very careful not to push the technology too far so that it only benefits them. It will be interesting to see if the extensions they are planning to add to RSS are truly open to everyone on all platforms (e.g. Linux and Mac) - not just Windows. Otherwise, it could be a repeat of embrace and extend - which got Microsoft into a bit of trouble back in the heyday of the browser wars.

How exactly could a new spec be made Windows specific when we are talking about an XML format? It's tags in a namespace guys, not Windows library code :)